Porsche names new chief executive officer

After Martin Winterkorn resigned last week and former Porsche head Matthias Mueller became the group’s new chief executive officer, his vacant post at the sports car manufacturer has been occupied by production chief Oliver Blume.

The top executive, aged 47, is a company veteran that also had a managing role at VW AG’s premium subsidiary Audi and was tasked with oversight of production at the sports car manufacturer since 2013. Porsche announced Wednesday in a statement Blume would take over the office from Matthias Mueller, who has been called at the headquarters in Wolfsburg to steer the company through the biggest crisis in its 78-year history – the diesel emissions scandal. Porsche meanwhile has been destabilized a bit since it lost certain executives since the parent company has been rocked by the unprecedented “dieselgate”, after it publicly admitted it had duped US regulators when performing diesel emissions tests and also said up to 11 million autos were affected worldwide.

Mueller, 62, was called to replace WInterkorn and his new appointment came just a day after personnel chief Thomas Edig was also leaving for a position at the VW commercial-vehicles unit. And the crisis-driven management reshape has also claimed another Porsche executive – Bernard Maier, the chief of global deliveries, asked to become the head of the Czech subsidiary Skoda. The latter would be followed by Detlev von Platen, 51, who lead Porsche Cars North America for more than seven years.